Why is it that programs assume that they know best for you and don’t honor your requests?? When I installed Adobe CS2 (great software BTW), I also got Acrobat 7.0 installed. I’m not all that thrilled about the PDF in general but they do make reading a big document a little easier. And they are the de facto standard when it comes to whitepapers, something I read a TON of, so I’ve learned to live with them. What I can’t live with is the fact that they add all kinds of garbage to all my applications. The toolbars in Word are nasty enough with Adobe throwing a bunch of extra crap in there that I’ll never use. I don’t need a top-level menu item to generate or comment on a PDF. To make matters worse, when I hide the toolbar it simply reappears (seems to happen when the window loses focus and then regains it). GAAHH!!

UPDATE: You’ll also want to set AttachmentsOption to 0 in the Settings for Outlook. This will get rid of it in the Compose a New Email. (Thanks Trint for catching this one.)

I googled around for a solution but nothing was forthcoming so I attempted to edit my “normal.dot”. Nothing. Enter the registry hack.
** DISCLAIMER: DO NOT EDIT YOUR REGISTRY IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING **

In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat\PDFMaker\7.0, there is a list of apps that it hooks onto like a life sucking leech attaches to. Each app is it’s own directory and has a sub-directory called Settings (e.g. Word | Settings) which contains a REG_BINARY key called ToolBarVisible. Delete this key and start the application in question. When you remove the toolbar, it should stay gone. Not sure why it won’t honor this normally but this was the only way that I could get my system to stop re-adding the toolbar – at least for the moment. 🙂

Every kid I know who saw Back To The Future Part II when it came out wanted a hoverboard. There were numerous lies stories going around about the coming availability/feasibility of such a device (and those cool shoes that laced themselves up by cinching the buckles tight). Ever the geek, I racked my brain and researched my heart out for a solution that would give me this sweet gem but in the end nothing was forthcoming and I was left with those “back of the magazine” ads that would sell you the plans for $20. I never did get around to mailing in for those but now it looks like I won’t have to. The plans are available here for nothing. Granted there’s not any pictures to go with the instructions but after having watched them build something similar on Mythbusters, I think this would be doable. Now, if I can just get my wife to understand that we NEED one of these…

If you work in the IT industry and even remotely like British humor, you HAVE to watch this show, “The IT Crowd”. Since Channel 4 isn’t so nice to anyone who’s outside of the UK (for bandwidth reasons, I’m sure), you’ll have to watch via someotherlinks – try looking in the comments if the direct links don’t work for you or you don’t use BitTorrent.

Not very many of us are born writers (Ok, so actually NO ONE is born a writer; it’s something we pick up around the second grade). I certainly suffer from the “not-quite-right-yet-so-keep-at-it-and-someday-it-will-be-done” syndrome when it comes to my writing (and even my posts here). So this post on Coding Horror (if you’re not reading CH – you should be) made me smile. Guess I’ll have to dig in and get some tips to I can keep the good times rolling here. 🙂

I’ve kept up with Ethan Marcotte thru his blog, sidesh0w.com, for quite some time now. He’s amazingly talented and I’m glad that he finally finished his “work” site, Vertua Studios. Clean and simple while being effective…*oogles stretchy header*

I guess the employees of this Blenz Cafe in Vancouver had put up with their boss long enough. The four co-signors decided to up and leave at once and post a little note to everyone about the action. Beyond Robson is the one that rode past and posted it. Having personally worked for some real losers, I gotta hand it to these folks for standing up to a boss that sounds like he deserved it.